A Modest Construct

¶ Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter: Publisher: Gotham; Year: 2008; Pages: 256

One of the benefits of being an armchair linguist is that I have absolutely no qualms about veering from, say, Baugh and Cable’s A History of the English Language or the nominally rebellious but practically canonical works of David Crystal to less academic but infinitely more pleasurable works of dedicated amateurs like Bill Bryson. Our Magnificant Bastard Tongue falls into the latter category (though McWhorter sometimes resembles Crystal in tone), not only because McWhorter is a sort of nuovo-linguist, the sort who would wear sneakers before tweed jackets, but also because this particular book was intended to be a shorter and more information introduction to McWhorter’s sphere… essentially a 250-page brochure for modern linguistics.

¶ The Diamond Age

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson: Publisher: Bantam Spectra; Year: 1995/2000; Pages: 499

Neal Stephenson novels are always a treat. It would be inaccurate to say they are formulaic, as each one is uniquely and wildly creative; however, they tend to share some characteristics, for better or worse. Last year I read Snow Crash, and prior to that I read his Cryptonomicon, and can’t help but notice, as others have, that though Stephenson expends considerable energy setting up a complicated plot and a tremendous, realistic world in which it occurs, his plot climaxes are so short and unexpected that one isn’t quite sure if it happened or not.